While surely centuries older, one of the earliest fairly detailed descriptions of the technique appears in an unpublished notebook, written around the turn of the 19th century. Will Houstoun transcribed the work and released it as The Notebook, 2009, p. 31. The anonymous author describes the approaches of two performers, one more accomplished than the other. The next item in this volume describes the force done behind the back and behind the head. The author believes the latter to be done through confederates, and in the case of the conjurer he witnessed performing this – who was the less skilled with the classic force – this may have been the case, though other magicians have found forcing behind the back relatively easy (see The Sphinx, Vol. 10 No. 5, July 1911, p. 92).